Claire Heuchan wins award for ‘Best Blog’

Over the next week we will be publishing information about all of our Write to End Violence Against Women award winners. You can find the full list here or read Annie McLaughlin’s article for the Sunday Herald here.

Claire Heuchan won the award for Best Blog for her piece ‘Self-Care or Speaking Out? A Black Feminist Dilemma’ – read it on her blog, Sister Outrider.

Discussing the racist and misogynist abuse she has received for her work, Claire Heuchan wrote in her blog:

“The abuse I receive online has reached new heights. For the first time (and probably not the last) I feel physically unsafe because of it. Along with the persistent misogyny, the overt racism, the steady drip drip drip of “shut up nigger”, there is something new: the threat of violence.

A white man told me that he wanted to hit me with his car. He wanted to hit me with his car and reverse over my body to make sure that I was dead. The scenario was so specific, the regard for my humanity so little, that it felt more real somehow than any of the other abuse I have received. It shocked me in a way that nothing on Twitter ever had before. I could hear my bones crack.”

Claire’s piece was described by the panel as “an emotive, original and necessary piece of writing”. The judges said that “the author’s flair for language sparkles from the page; resulting in an impactful blog which still resonates with you long after you’ve finished reading.”

Claire said after her win: “It’s incredibly moving to have won this award. I started my blog about a year and a half ago and I did that because nobody was really asking any of the questions I had about race and feminism and how the two sets of politics fit together and I was waiting and waiting for someone else to say these things. One day it dawned on me that no one was and I thought I should start.”